Who won the debate on the Saturday night before Christmas as people were partying and shopping and concentrating on everything but politics? Debbie Wasserman Schultz of course! She got exactly what she wanted, the lowest viewership of any debate so far, a measly 6.7 million viewers.
While Republicans get 15+ million viewers to slander our great candidates, our carefully hidden candidates don’t get half the viewership to show off their leadership and command of the facts. We don’t get the chance to debunk the flood of lies that comes spewing from the right wing propaganda machine.
I don’t care if you’re a Bernie supporter or a Clinton supporter, DWS is doing great damage to the Democrats by hiding what the Democratic party stands for. Not only do we not get the coverage from these hidden debates, how can you blame the major news networks for not covering our candidates when everyone knows the DNC doesn’t want the coverage?
John Nichols from the Nation has written an excellent column explaining the damage DWS is doing to the Democratic party. Here are some excerpts:
That was a good debate.
Let’s have some more of them.
Let’s have a lot more of them.
And let’s have a lot more of them on weeknights, when viewership, listenership and general attention is likely to be dramatically greater than on “ratings-disaster” weekend nights.
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Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her aides beg to differ, as they prattle on about “robust” viewership.
That’s just silly. The latest debate attracted a mere 6.71 million viewers, the lowest number so far for any 2016 debate organized by the DNC or the RNC. Saturday night’s debate was such a flop that it barely attracted one quarter of the viewership of the most watched Republican debate.
“I guess Christmas Eve was booked.” —Bernie Sanders aide Michael Briggs on Saturday night debates.
A “Christmas Special” debate, scheduled to compete with last-minute shopping, partying, and traveling was never going to rival the ratings for the various and sundry Republican debates—which so far have been held on a Thursday night, a Wednesday night, a Wednesday night, a Tuesday night, and a Tuesday night.
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The response of the O’Malley campaign to those numbers was the right one: “We can’t fool ourselves—the Republicans are eating our lunch in terms of attention and viewership because of the unprecedented, unilateral, and arbitrary way the DNC Chair determined this schedule,” said O’Malley deputy campaign manager Lis Smith.
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Here’s the problem: As groups such as Media Matters and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting have made clear, the Democratic race is getting less media attention than the Republican race. The attention paid Clinton, Sanders, and O’Malley, in combination, has been dramatically less than the attention paid one Republican—billionaire Donald Trump. Even also-ran Republicans like former Florida governor Jeb Bush have enjoyed far more television time than Sanders and O’Malley and, of late, second- and third-term Republicans have grabbed more of the spotlight than Clinton.
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The Democrats are doing most things wrong.
After months of delays, the DNC arranged a debate schedule that was cautious, restricted, and unambitious.
While the Republicans began debating in August, the Democrats waited until October to get started.
While the Republicans planned as many as a dozen debates, the Democrats started with just four firm debates. They will probably get to six—and they have allowed for some forums to take up the slack—but the Republican schedule is so much more serious that comparisons simply embarrass the Democrats.
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The article is definitely worth the read.
DWS is digging a deep hole for ALL our Democratic candidates, and make no mistake, when the Republican Oligarchs start throwing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of lies, fear, and hate at our Democrats we are going to be in a horrific fight to stop another 2010 or 2014!
DWS has to go! She has to go now! Our candidates need a fighting chance, not one arm tied behind their backs!